CLDA Final Mile Fridays with Arthur Axelrad, CEO and Co-Founder of Dispatch Science
Final mile companies generate an enormous amount of data every day.
Every order, route, driver, delivery window, proof of delivery, customer interaction, and service exception creates another piece of information about the business.
But having data and being data-driven are not the same thing.
The real opportunity for carriers isn’t simply collecting more information. It’s identifying what matters, making that information visible to the people making decisions, and actually using it to improve the business.
Start With the Business Goal
For small and mid-sized carriers, terms like “business intelligence” and “data-driven” can sometimes sound like something built for much larger organizations.
But Arthur emphasized that size doesn’t make data less important.
Whether a company operates 10 vehicles or 10,000, carriers are still managing tight margins, customer expectations, driver productivity, service quality, and capacity.
In fact, the bigger challenge today may be having too much information.
It’s easy for leaders to end up sorting through reports without knowing which numbers deserve their attention. Arthur’s advice was to start with the business objective.
If profitability is the priority, focus on costs and productivity.
If customer retention is the priority, look at service quality, on-time performance, damages, claims, and other measures of the customer experience.
If growth is the goal, capacity utilization and scalability may deserve more attention.
Instead of trying to measure everything, start by asking:
What are we trying to improve, and what information would help us make better decisions around it?
Focus on Metrics That Lead to Action
During the conversation, Arthur identified five KPIs that final mile carriers should have on their radar:
- On-time delivery
- Cost per delivery
- Driver productivity
- Customer satisfaction
- Route efficiency
The exact metrics will depend on the company’s goals, but the larger principle is simple: a metric should help you make a decision.
Knowing that your company completed 1,000 deliveries may be useful information. But if that number doesn’t help you understand what to change, improve, or investigate, it may not be the metric your leadership team needs most.
Arthur encouraged carriers to ask a simple question when reviewing their data:
What will we do differently because we know this?
That distinction can help leaders move beyond “vanity metrics” and focus on information that can actually influence the business.
Look for Patterns You Might Otherwise Miss
One of the biggest advantages of using data well is the ability to identify patterns that may be difficult to see during day-to-day operations.
Arthur shared the example of reviewing months of customer delivery volume and discovering a recurring dip on a particular day each month.
Once that pattern becomes visible, the carrier can investigate why it’s happening and plan driver capacity around it rather than having drivers sitting underutilized.
The same idea applies to service exceptions.
Repeated problems involving a particular location, driver, delivery type, or equipment requirement may look like unrelated incidents until the data reveals a pattern.
That’s when information becomes actionable: when it helps a company recognize something it might otherwise have missed and make a better decision because of it.
Better Data Can Help You Use Existing Capacity
Growth doesn’t always mean immediately adding more vehicles or drivers.
Route optimization is a good example of how data can help carriers make better use of the capacity they already have.
Effective optimization goes beyond simply putting stops in geographic order. It can take into account driver location, pickup and delivery windows, vehicle requirements, loads, and other operational constraints.
The benefits can also extend beyond dispatch.
Accurate route information can support proactive ETA notifications to customers, improving visibility while reducing “Where’s my order?” calls to customer service.
But there’s an important catch: technology can only work with the information it receives.
Accurate, well-structured data remains the foundation for getting meaningful results from optimization tools, reporting platforms, and transportation management systems.
Where AI Can Help
AI is creating new opportunities for carriers to put that information to work.
Arthur highlighted several practical applications, including:
- Predicting potential delays or service exceptions
- Automating proactive customer communications
- Managing appointment confirmations and status updates
- Analyzing proof-of-delivery photos
- Extracting reference information from documents or images
- Identifying visible package damage
- Reducing manual reconciliation and administrative work
The goal isn’t necessarily to remove people from the process.
Instead, AI can help identify information, patterns, and exceptions faster so employees can spend less time searching for problems and more time deciding what to do about them.
But AI isn’t a shortcut around having good processes.
A company still needs a strong data foundation, clear priorities, and people who understand how to use the information. As Arthur pointed out, AI isn’t going to suddenly make a company better on its own.
Technology Is Only Part of the Equation
One of the strongest themes from the conversation had less to do with software and more to do with culture.
Carriers can invest in transportation management systems, dashboards, optimization tools, integrations, and AI, but those investments only create value if people actually use them.
Arthur noted that companies that give their teams time to learn their technology, understand its capabilities, and continually improve how they use it tend to get more value from those systems.
Implementing a TMS isn’t the finish line.
Technology continues to evolve, and the companies getting the most from it are often the ones encouraging their teams to remain curious, keep learning, and continue asking:
Is there a better way to do this?
A Simple Place to Start
For carriers that want to become more data-driven, Arthur offered a practical first step:
Start a weekly operational review.
Choose one to three KPIs tied to something that can meaningfully improve the business, such as profitability, service, or productivity.
Review those numbers with your leadership and operations teams every week.
Make sure everyone understands why the metrics matter.
Then, most importantly, take action.
If the numbers reveal a problem, address it.
If the team doesn’t trust what the numbers are showing, look at how the data is being collected and improve it until everyone has confidence in the information.
Over time, that discipline can create a culture where decisions are supported by information rather than relying solely on instinct or the way things have always been done.
Because ultimately, being data-driven isn’t about having more dashboards, reports, or technology.
It’s about using the information you already have to make better decisions.
To learn more about Dispatch Science, visit dispatchscience.com.
Watch the Full Conversation
Want to go deeper? Watch the full CLDA Final Mile Fridays conversation with Arthur Axelrad of Dispatch Science for more on the KPIs carriers should be watching, route optimization, turning data into better decisions, practical uses for AI, and how to build a more data-driven culture across your organization.
CLDA Final Mile Fridays brings together industry leaders and experts for practical conversations about the issues affecting final mile businesses. Join us every Friday at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET, live on LinkedIn and YouTube, for conversations designed to help move the final mile industry forward.
